What Are You Watching?

[mlooney 3,525]

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Every place I've ever lived has locals. They are always odd, from an outsider point of view. The only way to avoid this phenomenon is to stay put and become a mentally inbred local yourself.

Working on that.

[Don Edwards 558]

11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Apparently few places are truly immune.

Tornadoes have been seen in every state of the US.

But they're significantly more common and more dangerous in some states than in others.

I remember reading the newspaper reports of the first time on record that the western half of the state of Washington actually had two tornadoes on the same day. Both were category zero. One touched down in the middle of Puget Sound, sucking up a fair amount of salt water and discomfiting an unknown number of fish. The other very briefly touched down in a paddock, lifting a horse off its feet and turning the animal 180 degrees before setting it down again - but not significantly damaging the horse or the fence.

[mlooney 3,525]

11 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

I remember reading the newspaper reports of the first time on record that the western half of the state of Washington actually had two tornadoes on the same day. Both were category zero. One touched down in the middle of Puget Sound, sucking up a fair amount of salt water and discomfiting an unknown number of fish. The other very briefly touched down in a paddock, lifting a horse off its feet and turning the animal 180 degrees before setting it down again - but not significantly damaging the horse or the fence.

We would call the 2nd a "dust devil" and if wouldn't even make the local news, much less state wide.

[mlooney 3,525]

Found the start of the next "crazy animal" movie
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/23/science/cocaine-sharks-brazil-scli-intl-scn/index.html

[Darth Fluffy 323]

On 7/23/2024 at 1:28 AM, Don Edwards said:

Tornadoes have been seen in every state of the US.

But they're significantly more common and more dangerous in some states than in others.

I remember reading the newspaper reports of the first time on record that the western half of the state of Washington actually had two tornadoes on the same day. Both were category zero. One touched down in the middle of Puget Sound, sucking up a fair amount of salt water and discomfiting an unknown number of fish. The other very briefly touched down in a paddock, lifting a horse off its feet and turning the animal 180 degrees before setting it down again - but not significantly damaging the horse or the fence.

There is a tornado-like thing called waterspouts which are over water; for a reason I don't recall, they are supposed to be milder (you still wouldn't want to be in one). It seems like a legitimate tornado could wander over water, I don't know how fast the power mitigation that I don't recall would take to kick in.

Seems like getting sucked up to the sky and then falling back would kill the fish. Hitting water is not a lot better than hitting ground, the surface tension is too high.

The horse was probably less than gruntled, but very fortunate.

I think tornadoes rare when the landscape has a lot of variation in elevation, such as nearby mountains. Seems also that desert areas get much fewer. I do not recall a lot in the Northeast, but as you say, not immune.

We get a fair number in the hilly, not mountainous, region of North Carolina, not one a year that I recall, but in the 30+ years I've been here, we've had several.

[mlooney 3,525]

4 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

We get a fair number in the hilly, not mountainous, region of North Carolina, not one a year that I recall, but in the 30+ years I've been here, we've had several.

Quote

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center has recorded 66 preliminary tornado reports so far this year in Kansas, compared to 39 for all of 2023.

 

Granted none close to where I live this year.

[Darth Fluffy 323]

20 hours ago, mlooney said:

We would call the 2nd a "dust devil" and if wouldn't even make the local news, much less state wide.

I've seen dust devils in Oklahoma, they are intimidating, but not nearly as deadly as a tornado. We were driving through on a summer day in an extremely flat part, and there were four visible, spinning away, not really far off, about as big as a tall building, guesstimating maybe 30 stories, not really 'up to the sky'. They appeared to be stable in position as we drove by.

They seemed to be generated by the ambient heat; there was no weather to speak of.

One day, on Kirkland AFB, just below Albuquerque, at the entrance to our workplace, I was a small whirlwind, about three feet high. It seemed to be generated by passing wind, steady but not very strong, an eddy cause by the corner of the building. It was picking up leaves and bits of paper, did not persist beyond the morning. It must have required the wind to come from a particular direction, because I only saw it once.

[Darth Fluffy 323]

6 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Granted none close to where I live this year.

They are one of the more notable features of Kansas. I was surprise driving through in the mid 2010s how many windmills there were, because it seemed that the tornadoes would tear them down. Seems that they are strong enough to withstand tornadoes?

[ChronosCat 155]

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

They are one of the more notable features of Kansas. I was surprise driving through in the mid 2010s how many windmills there were, because it seemed that the tornadoes would tear them down. Seems that they are strong enough to withstand tornadoes?

You say that as if every location in Kansas is regularly hit by a tornado. I've never been there and I'm no meteorologist, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case! I mean, Tornados aren't very wide, so even with dozens per year in a state the chances of any one town getting hit have to be pretty low, and I'm sure the majority of buildings are never touched by one.

[Darth Fluffy 323]

7 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

You say that as if every location in Kansas is regularly hit by a tornado. I've never been there and I'm no meteorologist, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case! I mean, Tornados aren't very wide, so even with dozens per year in a state the chances of any one town getting hit have to be pretty low, and I'm sure the majority of buildings are never touched by one.

Kansas is amazingly flat. I think pretty much every location has a high potential for being hit.

Tornadoes can be wider than you think (not always). The ones that hit Xenia, Ohio were a quarter mile wide. They also travel fairly fast and persist for a while (that was a plot point in the recent movie, the main character was good at anticipating which one of multiple funnels would persist).

You don't have to be hit by the funnel to be damaged. Stuff falls, and stuff is flung.

[mlooney 3,525]

The danger area of an EF-5 tornado is 2 miles wide, tops.  How wide is a hurricane again?

[Don Edwards 558]

13 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

There is a tornado-like thing called waterspouts which are over water; for a reason I don't recall, they are supposed to be milder (you still wouldn't want to be in one).

It doesn't make sense to me that a tornado at the moment it becomes a waterspout would be weaker than a tornado at the moment it touches down on land (all else being equal, which of course it never is exactly).

However...

At any given spot on land, there is a limit to how much stuff that tornado can pick up and lift high in the air.

At any given spot on a large body of water, there is functionally no such limit.

That picking up, and lifting high in the air, takes energy away from the tornado itself (even as it makes the tornado more dangerous - that rapidly flying debris can hit stuff, and the higher it's lifted the further it can fly out in a random direction before landing).

So, to me, it makes sense that a waterspout would lose energy faster.

(I went looking for an estimate of how much the debris in a tornado can weigh - no luck.)

[Darth Fluffy 323]

9 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

It doesn't make sense to me that a tornado at the moment it becomes a waterspout would be weaker than a tornado at the moment it touches down on land (all else being equal, which of course it never is exactly).

However...

At any given spot on land, there is a limit to how much stuff that tornado can pick up and lift high in the air.

At any given spot on a large body of water, there is functionally no such limit.

That picking up, and lifting high in the air, takes energy away from the tornado itself (even as it makes the tornado more dangerous - that rapidly flying debris can hit stuff, and the higher it's lifted the further it can fly out in a random direction before landing).

So, to me, it makes sense that a waterspout would lose energy faster.

(I went looking for an estimate of how much the debris in a tornado can weigh - no luck.)

Right, I don't think it is weaker the moment it moves from land to water. The ones that form over water are somehow weaker. Your other point though, about picking up water freely, makes a lot of sense, I think you're spot on. Work being done, applying potential energy to the water, has to have an energy source.

The movie had one glaring error, inserted for drama, people were being sucked out of uncollapsed structures. Things get sucked up by airflow; you have to have moving air. If the structure is still standing and blocking the airflow, the stuff inside does not get sucked out. (The tornado could be blowing air in on one side and sweeping people out, but it did not appear to be doing that.)

This is true of your vacuum cleaner as well (which is really an airflow cleaner). If you create a sturdy sealed box such that air cannot enter, and hook it up to your vacuum cleaner, the vac should fail to suck out the contents. It may have a brief initial moment of luck as it evacuates the box. It might also collapse the box if it is not sturdy enough.

 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,612]

 

The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad of the Modern Era 

If Emperor Theodosius I had not banned the games following the CCXCIII Olympiad in CCCXCIV AD, we could be watching the DCC Olympic Games right now  

(I may be off by a V or so.  Roman Math is a pain in the Senate.) 

 

[mlooney 3,525]

Are you allowing for probable stoppage of the games during the 100 Years War, and particularly the 30 Years War and the Wars of the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars? 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,612]

 

In the Twentieth Century, the Olympiads (four year periods) were counted even when the games were suspended in 1916, 1940 & 1944. So the Games of the VI Olympiad in Stockholm in 1912 were followed by the Games of the VIII Olympiad in Antwerp in 1920. 

 

The Olympic Winter Games, on the other ski, have been counted simply.  Thus the IV Olympic Winter Games of 1936 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen were followed by the V Olympic Winter games of 1948 in St Moritz.

[mlooney 3,525]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

In the Twentieth Century, the Olympiads (four year periods) were counted even when the games were suspended in 1916, 1940 & 1944. So the Games of the VI Olympiad in Stockholm in 1912 were followed by the Games of the VIII Olympiad in Antwerp in 1920. 

The IOC is weirder than I thought.

[mlooney 3,525]

This could get me to watch a western

 

[Darth Fluffy 323]

Just saw latest  Deadpool movie. Really good in many ways, if you can stomach the Disney narcissism. Egregiously breaks the fourth wall. Repeatedly. Aw, hell, it;s more of a fourth screen door in this case. Lots of action. Not as many quips as previous. Lots of Deadpool content by the end, will be difficult to beat this threshold in future movies.

Put your brain on hold, though, how they handle 'antimatter' is dumb.

Saw it in 3-D and 4-D (shake the seats) - does that make it 5-D? Seems like '7-D' is counting some of the dimensions too many times. They used the special features well (which is surprising).

[mlooney 3,525]

7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Egregiously breaks the fourth wall.

Well that is Deadpool's thing, even in comics.

[Darth Fluffy 323]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

Well that is Deadpool's thing, even in comics.

Deadpool doing so is funny. In this, it got annoying. It would be difficult to explain. It wasn't clever. It was too self aware. It was the difference between being aware that you have an audience in Deadpool 1 and now knowing the names of the various actors who have played various characters in the Marvel universe in various films. Taking a successful gimmick and beating the living snot out of it.

It was Disney. They do not understand 'subtle'. (To be fair, they did better than average with the 3-D and shaky-shaky.)

[mlooney 3,525]

25 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

It was Disney. They do not understand 'subtle'.

Never really have, to be honest.  Not even during their first golden age.

[Darth Fluffy 323]

Just now, mlooney said:

Never really have, to be honest.  Not even during their first golden age.

I am sad they are buying franchises. They infuse them with cash, but they ruin them with their 'production standards'. The last Thor was kinda dog excrement.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,612]

 

Games of the XXXIII Olympiad.  Breaking.  

Break dancing as Olympic competition.

I don't know what seperates good from great in this game.  But Breaking is the right name.  I would certainly break somthing attempting any of those moves.

 

[Darth Fluffy 323]

Watching 'Professor of Rock' on Youtube. Lots of trivia.